Cite as: 525 U. S. 155 (1999)
Syllabus
tories, in the treaty's preamble, specifically recognized the advantage of regulating carrier liability in a uniform manner. To provide the desired uniformity, Chapter III sets out an array of liability rules applicable to all international air transportation of persons, baggage, and goods. These rules delineate the three areas of carrier liability (Articles 17, 18, and 19), the conditions exempting carriers from liability (Article 20), the monetary limits of liability (Article 22), and the circumstances in which carriers may not limit liability (Articles 23 and 25). Given the Convention's comprehensive scheme of liability rules and its textual emphasis on uniformity, the Court would be hard put to conclude that the Warsaw delegates meant to subject air carriers to the distinct, nonuniform liability rules of the individual signatory nations. The Second Circuit misperceived the meaning of Zicherman, which acknowledged the Convention's central endeavor to foster uniformity in the law of international air travel. See 516 U. S., at 230. Zicherman determined that Warsaw drafters intended to resolve whether there is liability, but to leave to domestic law (the local law identified by the forum under its choice-of-law rules or approaches) determination of the compensatory damages available to the suitor. See id., at 231.
Articles 17, 22, and 24 of the Convention are also designed as a compromise between the interests of passengers seeking recovery for personal injuries, and the interests of air carriers seeking to limit potential liability. See, e. g., Floyd, 499 U. S., at 546. In Article 17, carriers are denied the contractual prerogative to exclude or limit their liability for personal injury. In Articles 22 and 24, passengers are limited in the amount of damages they may recover, and are restricted in the claims they may pursue by the Convention's conditions and limits. Construing the Convention, as did the Second Circuit, to allow passengers to pursue claims under local law when the Convention does not permit recovery could produce several anomalies. Carriers might be exposed to unlimited liability under diverse legal regimes, but would be prevented, under the treaty, from contracting out of such liability. Passengers injured physically in an emergency landing might be subject to the liability caps of the Convention, while those merely traumatized in the same mishap would be free to sue outside of the Convention for potentially unlimited damages. The Second Circuit's construction would encourage artful pleading by plaintiffs seeking to opt out of the Convention's liability scheme when local law promised recovery in excess of that prescribed by the treaty. Such a reading would scarcely advance the predictability that adherence to the treaty has achieved worldwide.
The Second Circuit feared that a reading of Article 17 to exclude relief outside the Convention for Tseng would deprive a passenger injured by
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